Pure Exploration is not a Valid Standalone Mechanic

“I’ve already written a brief overview of my take on No Man’s Sky and have spent a good portion of the last few days scouring the Internet for the various criticisms and defenses of the game.

Perhaps the most salient and convincing argument I’ve seen thus far on behalf of NMS is the game isn’t meant to be enjoyed by the standards of traditional mechanics, rather, it’s a game based on “pure exploration.” The argument goes something like this:

“Due to a combination of Hello Games making vague comments about the potential content of No Man’s Sky and Sony pouring a truck load of money into marketing to fuel the game’s hype machine, a lot of players were misled into believing that NMS was a standard AAA game with wide appeal. In reality, NMS is basically an indie game with an indie-sized development team (15 individuals), working on a barely larger than indie budget, with indie ambitions to fill the niche indie market of pure exploration games. Yes, NMS is lacking a lot of expected features, feels bare bones in parts, and doesn’t have a very compelling core gameplay loop by the standards of traditional big budget open world games, but that doesn’t matter because that was never the point of NMS. The game is really just about exploring cool worlds in an enormous universe and seeing everything that there is to see. It’s all about exploration.”

While I completely sympathize with the idea that an indie developer got caught up in a hype machine, and I’m totally on board with seeing small indie games try wildly experimental gameplay techniques… I don’t buy this argument on behalf of NMS…”